2026-09-22 17:20:00
I grew up in a house stuffed full of books, with no television, and electricity for only an hour or two per day (while the generator was running). There were shelves full of old science fiction (Asimov and Heinlein), as well as books on history, some good old fantasy, and other smatterings collected from second-hand bookstores over the years.
My mother read to us each night when we were children, starting with Dr Seuss, all the way to Harry Potter, where she did the spooky voices during the Voldemort scenes, which had me walking up and down the room with my fingers in my ears, humming to myself, until the scary parts were over. Naturally, this led to me reading a lot as a teenager and young adult. Up until I left home at 18, I would fall asleep each night reading by candlelight, which sounds very romantic and, in hindsight, definitely contributed to good sleep growing up.
At university, I read substantially less. I suddenly had a computer in my room, reliable electricity, and downloaded series to watch. I never stopped reading, but certainly felt my attention span erode as a result (I also think Family Guy circa 2012 rotted my brain irreparably).
As you can probably tell by now, I love reading books. It's my favourite form of media, by far, and I finish around a book a week. This may sound like a lot, but it translates into about an hour of reading per day—the length of a modern series episode, and while I'm not keeping count, the books I've read over the past year have really stacked up.
Reading does something that other forms of media, by their nature, can't do: it allows the reader to see the world through the lens of the author and their characters, creating empathy, where they not only see the actions taken (such as in film), but also understand their perspectives, motivations, thoughts, and feelings. I find that my thinking is generally influenced by whatever I'm reading at the moment. When I'm reading Pratchett, I see the world with some tongue-in-cheek whimsy. Conversely, when reading Hugh Howey, I'm more cynical about the machinations of the societal elite and technological advancement.
Reading books is also a fickle activity, as it requires activation energy and a decent attention span, both of which are eroded by the media landscape today. I've found that, since deleting my YouTube algorithm over a year ago, I have had a lot more time and energy for reading, and I'm grateful for making that choice.
My YouTube home page
Much ink has been spilled about the decline of reading and literacy and how we're becoming a post-literate society, so I'll only touch on it lightly: the main reason for this decline is access to higher-calorie entertainment with lower nutrient density—mostly short-form video. This really started with television in the 1960s, yet only became an intellectual crisis in the past two decades thanks to Netflix and YouTube. It was surprising to learn that blue-collar workers in the ’50s had better literacy than college-educated adults today, and has gotten to the point where some governments have proposed paying people to read. This is well documented in Amusing Ourselves to Death (1985) by Neil Postman, which is worth reading.
This year, I have been re-reading the Discworld books by Terry Pratchett—possibly my favourite author and an all-round interesting person. If I could have dinner with any historical figure, it would be this man. He possesses a way of looking at the world, alongside a delightfully descriptive and witty style, that I can only stand in awe of. I've also read a handful of non-fiction books, as well as Wool, which I believe has been made into an Apple TV series named Silo.
My bedside table for most of this year (featuring a lamp made by Emma)
I received a bookstore voucher from some friends for my 34th birthday and have decided to get into the classics with Frankenstein by Mary Shelley (I feel this is a relevant book at the moment, as humans are currently creating a monster of our own that may escape our control) and Crime and Punishment by Dostoyevsky, which is arguably one of the most important pieces of historical literature.
Thanks, Graeme and JP!
Reading never leaves you; it just becomes buried by other things. I no longer need to read by candlelight, but I still fall asleep every night with a book. If you haven't read for a while, I encourage you to block out some time, forgo an episode of the series you're currently watching, and settle down with a good book. It could be a classic you've always meant to read, or an old favourite you'd like to revisit. You don't need to finish a book a week; a few pages before bed are a perfectly good place to start. Email me if you'd like some recommendations (though there's a fair chance I'll suggest something by Pratchett).
2026-08-25 19:59:45
I write about journaling a lot, since it’s honestly my most important practice.
In my most recent post on the subject I made the case that active recall is an effective way to remember things, whether that be ideas, thoughts, or events. I'd like to expand on that post and make the case that journaling extends life perception.
To wax philosophical for a moment: long life perception and long lifespan are, when it comes down to it, effectively the same thing. If we live in the infinite now, then the only thing separating an actual long life from the perception of a long life is perception.
This intuitively makes sense, and you've likely experienced this yourself. Years that are filled with novelty tend to feel longer and are more memorable than years of consistently similar days. It's partly why time feels so much longer as a child, since all experiences are fairly novel and there's explicit progression though the different phases of school, which stands in stark contrast to, say, a few years of working the same job and rarely taking vacation or trying anything new. Those few years can easily condense into a handful of memories, and so the perception of those years is fairly short.
Regularly in conversation the person I'm talking to will say something along the lines of "Wow, it's August already!? Time flies.". I rarely share this sentiment (with the exception of the pandemic, where all my days effectively became one), and I ascribe this to two main reasons:
The first reason is that I try to do new things as much as possible. Just last night I played ultimate frisbee for the first time on the beach at sunset with a good friend and his crew of (really athletic) frisbros. I was pretty bad at the game and fumbled the frisbee too many times, but after the beautiful sunset and a dip in the cold ocean to clear off the sand I felt great, and I'll likely remember this experience as it punctuated normal life.
The second reason, and this is the underlying point I'm trying to make with this post, is that I write about my day while journaling, and in-so-doing remember it better. And since I remember these experiences it doesn't feel like time is slipping away from me. Instead it feels like time is rich and full. Yes, it's August, but I feel like it's been 2026 forever.
The research on active recall improving memory is clear. The research on life perception is less clear, but intuitively it makes sense that remembering more of your life will make it feel longer and hopefully richer.
There are many reasons to journal, but I feel this is a lesser discussed effect of journaling, and one I'm only starting to appreciate now.
2026-08-05 20:04:00
There's a quote from the book City of Thieves by David Benioff where a character laments the fickleness of talent:
Talent must be a fanatical mistress. She's beautiful; when you're with her, people watch you, they notice. But she bangs on your door at odd hours, and she disappears for long stretches, and she has no patience for the rest of your existence; your wife, your children, your friends. She is the most thrilling evening of your week, but some day she will leave you for good. One night, after she's been gone for years, you will see her on the arm of a younger man, and she will pretend not to recognize you.
While I love this quote, as well as the book (you should definitely read it), I can't help but disagree with the premise that talent and creativity are divinely bestowed and out of your control.
I've read a few autobiographies of prolific authors, and they all state the same thing: the words don't come easily and sometimes need to be dragged, kicking and screaming, into the light. The book Creativity by the winner of the most-difficult-to-pronounce-name-award, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, shares this conclusion and suggests that creativity is a creature to be nurtured, given space to grow, and needs commitment and a lack of distractions to thrive.
The thesis is clear: relying on motivation is a losing game. Motivation is a feeling, while commitment is a decision that outlives the feeling.
I've found this to be true in my own life, both in creative pursuits, and in things like relationships and exercise. It is a rare person who is amped to exercise all the time, and so it requires commitment to stick with it. Similarly, showing up well in your relationships can't depend on fleeting passions, because life is bumpy.
The nice thing is that commitments become easier with time. I have near zero resistance to exercising and journalling, and have been doing both almost every day for close to a decade. The first year or two were difficult, but once they were a part of my day, they became absurdly easy to continue doing. Relatedly, when I'm in a good writing routine it is effortless to write. However, if I go a month without writing on my blog (as is currently the case), each word is a struggle.
Action begets motivation, not the other way around.
Creativity is like a muscle. It requires constant use to grow, and atrophies when neglected. But creativity is transferable, and so, engaging creatively has positive effects in other creative domains. This post was inspired by a comic jam I attended this past weekend. The comics were great, genuinely funny, and everyone had a wholesome time. It also made me realise how long it had been since I'd sketched.
Conversely, I speculate that forgoing creative thought will lead to it "leaving you for a younger man". She doesn't leave on a whim, she leaves when you stop showing up.
It hurts when I see people "brainstorming with AI". This is essentially offloading creative thought to a machine, forgoing the most human of processes. It honestly makes me sad, and I can't help but feel that collectively we’re losing something beautiful. The machines are coming for so much, but we can’t let them have this.
So go do something creative. Anything. Make a zine, paint with some watercolours, come up with a song. And keep doing that, forever.
2026-06-09 22:50:00
I'm currently reading What I talk about when I talk about running by Haruki Murakami (thanks for the recommendation, Rishi) and a line stuck out to me:
Perhaps I'm just too painstaking a type of person, but I can't grasp much of anything without putting down my thoughts in writing.
This line resonated with me because I've also found that the best way for me to understand a concept or idea is for me to write about it. Reading only gets me so far. The act of articulating what is stored in my brain into something legible and understandable is thinking and understanding.
I worry about the education system, which has had the entire concept of writing as a form of study upended by AI, and universities have seen their first decline in literacy and comprehension ever recorded. But this isn't what this post is about, this post is about remembering things.
I have often received complements from friends and strangers alike on how good my memory is. This tends to be complimenting what is generally considered a static attribute, since most people think of memory as being an immutable characteristic of a person. I can say with certainty that this isn't the case. The reason I remember things and confidently convey them is usually because I've written about them at some point.
This isn't relegated to ideas and concepts, but events in my own life, since I keep a daily journal and have for over a decade now. I've written more about this here, here, and here.
There's a study with the mouthful of a title Retrieval Practice Produces More Learning than Elaborative Studying with Concept Mapping by Karpike and Blunt (2011) that I read this morning where they had college students read short educational texts, then study them in different ways: rereading, building concept maps while looking at the text, and free recall (reading once, then writing down everything they could remember on a blank page without looking at the source material). On a delayed test about a week later they found that free recall produced better information retention than rereading or creating a concept map.
There's an extra detail emphasised that's the real kicker: in one version of the experiment, the final test itself was to produce a concept map — yet the students who had studied by free recall still outperformed the ones who had studied by making concept maps. So even when the practice method (free recall) didn't match the test format (concept mapping), the act of retrieving from memory beat the more elaborate, intuitively "deeper" study technique.
I realise that, inadvertently, this is exactly what I've been doing the entire time with my blog, notes, and journal. The reason I can recall information so well is because I have read, watched, experienced, or discussed a concept or idea, then wrote about it on my blog, or in my notes or journal. I was practising free-recall this whole time and managed to trick people around me into thinking I'm just unnaturally good at remembering things.
This concept isn't new. The process of studying has historically always involved some form of note-taking and active recall. I wasn't a good student (at all) and never learnt how to study. The structure of school (and government school in South Africa, no less) was not set up in a way that allowed knowledge to stick. I feel like one minor tweak to the school system should be a course dedicated to how to study and effective note-taking. It's a pity I didn't have these skills in school because it would have made it a lot more pleasant. There's nothing quite as frustrating as having to learn something and despite many late nights studying, it refusing to lodge itself in my brain.
To come full circle, there's nothing particularly special about the way that I take notes, write, or journal. It is the act of doing it which is important. I tend to journal about my yesterday each morning before getting into work. As for notes, whenever there's something interesting I'd like to remember I write it in my notes.txt file, which is a large file full or random scribbles. As for writing on my blog, I don't have a schedule or explicit plan, I just write when there's something I've been thinking about that I believe is interesting.
The interesting part is that I don't really read my notes or journal. The act of writing is the important bit.
In a nutshell: I write for you all, but I guess I also write for me.
2026-06-05 16:23:00
I recently completed my first long trail race, set in the Southern Drakensberg mountains with Emma, my siblings and their partners. It spanned 2 days with 30km on the first, and 15km on the second, winding through valleys and around mountains. It was spectacular. I love coming to the Drakensberg, which is a beautiful and unique mountain range, and I'm glad to have the excuse to be here.
While I'm generally an active person, I've never been a runner. My first proper run (more than 3km) was in January this year after my brother twisted my (and Emma's) arm into signing up for this race. Since this was not a trivial distance, it meant I couldn't just wing it on my base fitness, and so Emma and I started running 2-3 times a week in preparation. We had 15 weeks until the event and settled on a fairly simple training plan:
We didn't stick to this plan exactly, especially since the final 4 weeks coincided with our trip to Japan, but we stuck to the spirit of this plan, and it worked out quite well, with our running fitness increasing quite dramatically over that period without any injuries or overreaching.
This is in contrast to other times in my life where I'd try to get into running, start off too ambitiously, become a sweaty, exhausted mess with creaky joints, and ultimately decide that running just isn't for me. Because we capped the increase of speed and distance over time to no more than 10% per week, each run was challenging but not insurmountable. It was also nice to see how quickly running fitness increases when compared to strength, which can take months to see measurable gain (after the initial neural adaptation).
One caveat is that I hate cars too much to enjoy road running, and the symmetric, hard surface makes my right knee ache in a way that trail running doesn't. Plus being on a mountain is so much prettier than the asphalt city grid or suburbs.
What I enjoyed the most about this experience was how it opened up a whole other world of events and community that is both accessible and affordable. There was suddenly an excuse to get out onto the mountain at least once a week with friends. To go out to parts of the surrounding countryside that I'd never been to before, stand in the chilly morning air while sipping on instant coffee from a chipped enamel cup, then run through it while the sun came up.
The event we ultimately completed—The Giant's Cup—was a particularly good one in that it was a destination event, and a non-trivial run with people I love and enjoy spending time with. And while I may never become a Runner (I'm by no means placing), I'm certain that I'll be a runner for the next several decades.
2026-05-27 14:45:00
One of the things I like best about blogs is that posts stick around (or at least they should). I enjoy scrolling through historic posts of bloggers and reading about what they were thinking about 1, 5, or even 10 years ago—if I'm lucky.
I've noticed that my most recent posts get the more attention than the rest of my blog. This makes sense, as I have the most recent 5 posts on my homepage, alongside the fact that newer posts go out to my email subscribers and are more likely to find themselves on link aggregators, Twitter feeds, and RSS readers.
I'd like to take this opportunity to resurface some posts you may have missed, or may enjoy revisiting. I also encourage you, if you happen to be a blogger, to do the same. There's so much great writing buried by more recent posts that could do with some additional attention. This is also the reason I've added a Random tab to the discovery feed.
I recently got back from a month-long trip to Japan where Emma and I visited some of the big cities, but spent most of our time in rural Japan and hiked a well-preserved portion of the Nakasendo trail. While in Japan, I had the privilege of meeting up with some bloggers: Seio for some tea in a lovely old tea house in Tokyo, and Daiki for some delicious okonomiyaki in Kyoto. Thanks to both of you!
With that in mind, I'd like to resurface the post Yes, I will have coffee with you where I invite people to meet up with me, if we happen to be in the same city. I love meeting new people, and enjoy the opportunity to share my city, or take part in theirs.
The second post I'd like to resurface is Why I started journaling, and its follow up Observations on 6 years of journaling. I still journal daily, however since 2024 this has been in one large text file instead of disparate physical journals. I write about this in Plain text journaling.
There are a few posts I wrote about city design, which is a topic that has always fascinated me. I have a WIP post about Japanese city design, and what makes their cities interesting and easy to traverse. With that in mind here is a tongue-in-cheek post on The future of self-driving, and my Thoughts on buying a car. One note: I no longer drive the teensy orange car. It turns out that at highway speeds it got so loud in the cabin (due to its lunchbox shape) that I had to wear noise-cancelling earphones to be comfortable.
Related is a post on how Roundabouts improve cities for everyone, for those of us not graced with efficient public transport.
And finally, off the back of completing a 45km trail run through the Drakensberg mountains (post incoming as well), I'd like to resurface A case for socks with toes where I champion toe socks. These were extremely helpful in preventing blisters and other discomforts on my run, and the post is worthy of a bump up.
There are so many other posts that I put a lot of time and love into that I haven't mentioned here. If you're interested in checking them out, I encourage you to browse my blog page.
As a side note: In putting this post together I reread so many old posts of mine that I'd forgotten about. It's interesting and delightful seeing what I was doing and thinking at certain times over the past few years, which echoes the sentiment of Valentine's post from yesterday.